One of the most important people you’ll meet in your artistic travels and endeavors is a guy named Mike Check – he usually spells his name, Mic Check.

You will meet Mic before the start of a radio or TV interview when the host or producer says, “Let’s check your volume and overall setting on the microphone (Mic).”

Just as you should be prepared for an under prepared interviewer, you need to be prepared for the mic check process to be incomplete and rushed over. Sometimes the interviewer is too busy during the interview to monitor your volume or to see where your mouth is in relation to the microphone.

I encourage you to buy an inexpensive microphone and experiment to find the best places to position the mic: how close or how far away should you be to sound clear and easily audible? Plug it in to your phone or any other playback device and listen.

More importantly, what part of the mic should to talk in to? Should you be at an angle, off to the side or above the mic?

In general, you rarely what to talk directly in to the center of the mic: that’s where POPS occur. POPS are the biggest radio sound turn off and distraction in all of broadcasting.

When you experiment with you mic placement, you’ll see and hear where you sound the best, and the mic position and placement where the undesirable POPS occur.

This is also a good thing to do if you ever speak in front of your audience at a concert preview or conference gathering.

Bad audio like this can happen in any interview environment. Why just last week at a Satellite Radio company…